If you will pardon the tautology, there is a great deal of movement currently going on in global mobility. Employees are more mobile than ever and this increase is set to continue.

According to the PwC report Managing tomorrow’s people: The future of work to 2020, assignee levels have increased by 25 per cent over the past decade, and a further growth of 50 per cent is predicted in mobile employees by 2020.

Global mobility practitioners need to offer variety in corporate policies to fit with the needs of today’s relocating employees, while fulfilling budget requirements and supporting the organisation’s talent mobility management programme. Recent conversations with our clients have identified the following five key trends that are influencing the way mobility is managed to support talent management and build an effective global leadership pipeline.

Trend One: Centralisation, with a regional lens

Change is both constant and rapid and many companies have found they can be more nimble by centralising their global mobility programmes and maintaining regional administration.

More centralisation doesn’t diminish the importance of regional mobility teams. In fact, it further defines their value. They not only bring their regional experience and perspective to the table – which benefits employees and vendor management relationships – they also give solid internal support to their business unit managers.